Episode 104: Your Semi-Happy Marriage

Welcome to the Loving Truth Podcast where it's all about finding clarity, confidence and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host, relationship expert and certified master life coach, Sharon Pope. Hello loves. This is Sharon Pope and this is the Loving Truth. Today we're going to talk about your semi happy marriage. So this term came from an article that I read back in 2011. A woman named Leila Alphonse, who she was the senior editor of Manage youe Life.

She wrote an article that talked about your semi happy marriage. And the way that she described a semi happy marriage was one of low conflict, low passion and low satisfaction. And I think that that describes a lot of marriages today. If you think about low conflict, that's usually because there isn't a lot of passion. We're not passionate about anything and so we get kind of numb. We sort of live our lives from a very busy but numb place and then we lose our sense of excitement and adventure and passion.

And that leads to very low satisfaction inside of our relationships. So I very much identified with that language of a semi happy marriage in as it related to my first marriage. I mean, from the outside looking in, our marriage looked pretty good, right? We had all the things we were supposed to have. We were doing all the things that we were supposed to do. We had lots of friendships, we had a lot of things going for us.

But we as a couple, we weren't really a couple, right? We were, we were good friends who cared about each other. We didn't argue very much. But I do remember being mad a lot. And it wasn't about something in particular. It was just sort of this underlying irritation that was with me all the time. And I know that that made me less patient with him, more angst ridden, if you will.

Just like just sort of a dull permanent upset or dull permanent irritation. Which means I know I wasn't showing up as my best self in that relationship. So we lived life together, but we were never lovers. Like that concept of being lovers, that was not something that we knew, understood or were willing or able to step into for each other. And so we felt really disconnected. There wasn't passion, but there also wasn't intimacy like that really knowing each other at a deep level.

And there was also very little affection. Would we have sex? Yes, we would. But was it very rote? Always the same, no real passion or energy or aliveness there? There's a difference. We would never just cuddle for hours, even while watching tv. We'd never like lose time together. That's not something that we did. We were always doing something. We were very busy, I can tell you. Not once in our 12 years of marriage did I just wake up to being held in his arms.

As a matter of fact, I couldn't even touch him while he slept, otherwise he said he couldn't sleep. So there was no affection, there was no touching or cuddling. He never told me that I was beautiful or stunning or sexy or anything like that. Although once in a while I would be told that I was pretty or I was cute. But words have power and cute and pretty is very different than beautiful and stunning, right?

I never. I didn't feel unsafe with him ever. But if I ever needed protecting, he was not the guy that was going to do that for me. I was going to have to do that for myself. So I didn't feel unsafe with him, but I never felt safe or protected by him, if that makes sense. And if I was super stressed about something that was happening in my life, there was never a time that he was able to sort of take that from me and say, I've got you.

I'm going to deal with this. Don't you worry about it. That was not part of his DNA. That's just not something that he knew how to do. So I for sure can look back at the way in which we related to one another and the way in which we were in relationship with one another and say, yeah, that fits the bill of a semi happy marriage. One of low conflict, low passion and low satisfaction.

And I think that that's also the story of many of my clients, right? They're not fighting a lot, mostly because they'll just shut down and they'll walk away before they will come back and argue and fight. Although some of them do, right? When you're in a passionate relationship, fire only burns hot. So when you're in a passionate relationship, the arguments are very passionate and it's just as intense as the good times inside the relationship.

But I think that for a lot of us, we fall into this zone inside of our marriages where it's very comfortable, it's very known, it's very predictable. But then we've also stopped living a life that feels passionate. And so then we are unhappy in our lives and we're unhappy inside of our marriages. Or maybe not even. Maybe we wouldn't even go so far as to say, I'm not happy, but we would say, I'm not satisfied.

I know that there's more. I know that there should be more. Shouldn't there be more? But yet we don't have it because we've stopped living passionate lives. And so then we move through our life feeling kind of numb, maybe even bored, and asking like, is this all there is? Because I thought it was going to feel different. I thought it was going to be different than it actually is.

And it doesn't mean we're bored like sitting around twiddling our thumbs. I think everyone is super busy, but bored because we're busy with all the wrong things. We're busy doing the things of life, but we're not doing. We're not busy doing the things that light us up as human beings or feed that passionate side of ourselves. And so then we start to feel dead inside. And I don't know about you, but I know that that feeling for me I very much blamed on my spouse, like, you should do something about this.

That I feel sort of dead, that I feel numb, that I feel bored, that I feel lonely or alone. Like, you should do something different so that I don't feel that way. And then we wonder why so many women now are turning to affairs. Because that's then that one thing alone sets everything else on fire, right? And we go from a place of being numb to a place of real crisis in our lives and in our marriages.

But we're not bored anymore. Now we've got excitement and adventure and risk and danger and a whole bunch of things that surround the context of affairs. So if you're feeling like you're in a semi happy marriage, I want you to think about what do you want to do about it? Because sitting back and waiting for your partner to do something different so that you'll feel different, I just don't think that that's a winning strategy.

So instead, what I would recommend is that you begin by inserting more passion into your own life. Right? We have to stop looking to everybody else to create the life for us that we want to have. It's like outsourcing the most important pieces of our lives to other people and saying, do a good job with that. When they're not equipped or qualified to do that for us, they can't hardly do it for themselves.

We're the only ones that are equipped and qualified to live our own lives. But we keep subjugating that responsibility to other people. So we're like a fair partner. You, you bring passion and excitement to my life or husband. You're supposed to bring passion and excitement to my life. No, we have to begin with ourselves. It doesn't mean that they don't play A role. It means that if we are dead inside, there is nothing that your spouse can do to bring you to life.

That's your job. But can they take you from a low simmer to a boil? Of course they can. Right? If we allow that to happen. So we have to begin by inserting more passion into our own lives and not falling prey to looking to others to be the person that is inserting passion into our lives. We shouldn't use our spouse in that way. We shouldn't use our kids in that way.

We shouldn't use our fair partner in that way. Like, we're just using other people so that we don't have to do the heavy lifting in our own lives. Right? And so if we begin with ourselves, I want you to think about this. What's something that you have always wanted to do but you've put off for whatever reason? Right? There were probably lots of really valid, good reasons why you haven't done the things that you really want to do.

But you have done all the things that you need to do. Like, you're probably a pretty upstanding citizen. You pay your taxes and you go to work and you do the things that you need to do. But what is it that you want to do? What are some of the desires that you've been carrying around? And if you don't know, if nothing comes to mind, then here's the path that you're going to have to take.

You're going to have to get curious. You're going to have to say yes to things more than you say no to things. You're going to have to, like, feel how you feel. You're going to have to notice how you feel after you do these new things. If it felt great, if it felt interesting, and it makes you want to lean into it a little bit more, then follow that.

That's a hot track in your life. Follow that if it feels cold, if it feels like, yeah, not really. I didn't really enjoy that. Then pump the brakes and go in a different direction. You're getting closer and closer to what you really want and what you really desire. Because the more you know what you don't want, then of course, you know closer to what you do want. So you're gonna have to try new things.

You're gonna want to set new goals for yourself. I cannot tell you how much of an impact it can make in your life to have something really meaningful that you can focus upon. And it. It doesn't. It can be your kids, but it really, I Feel like it should be something that is just for you. Because honestly, that's one of the things that I hear from women when they are involved in an affair and that's the only passion that they have lives is that that's like something that's just for them.

Every other part of many females lives is all about everybody else. What their boss needs, what their husband needs, what their kids need. It's all about what other people need from them. And so selfishly, this is the one part of their life where they're able to be selfish and it's just for them. So whatever is passionate for you, whatever excites you and interests you in your life to get you from being bored and numb and just zoned out or dead inside to maybe a low simmer, that's what you want to explore.

And from that place, when you have something really interesting to focus upon and you feel a little bit more alive in your own life from that place, then you can create something that feels like more passion and more aliveness in your life and in your marriage. But if we just sit back and keep waiting for our partner to do it all for us, I think we're just going to be waiting a long time and this semi happy marriage is going to become a semi convenient divorce.

Right? So in the spirit of taking responsibility for ourselves and controlling our side of the street of what how we're showing up for ourselves in our own lives, we've got to begin there and from there we have something to build upon inside of our relationship. But if we don't do that work in and of, you know, just within ourselves, then we're always going to struggle and then we're always going to look at our marriage and feel a very, just a sense of very low satisfaction with our marriages.

When we are playing an active participant role in the creation of how our marriage is today, whether that's good or bad, we are an active participant to it. Right? So I just want you to show up with the right frame of mind and the right level of. Not the right level, but a good level of curiosity and excitement and interest in your own life again. Because when you do that, passion is just another step away from there.

All right. I hope that that is helpful to you. I hope it gives you something really to think about and chew on and gives you a different perspective on what you might have considered a semi happy marriage. And there's nowhere else to go. So you don't have to get comfortable in a semi happy marriage. You just have to reach for a little bit more passion first within yourself, and then once you have that, then you can create it in your marriage.

Until next time, please take really good care if you're listening to this podcast because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a Truth and Clarity session with a member of my team on the call. We'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage.

Go to clarityformymarriage.com to fill out an application. Now that's clarityformymarriage.